Pilot Project on Tropical Forest Cover Monitoring: Benin - Cameroon - Togo - Project Implementation: Methodology, Results and Conclusions

The pilot project on tropical forest cover monitoring was formulated in the context of a joint UNEP/FAO programme for the surveillance of the world's tropical forests, originating in a recommendation of the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment. Financed predominantly by UNEP, the project was executed by FAO and implemented in Benin, Cameroon and Togo. Project activities were undertaken between August 1975 and February 1979, with field work lasting from November 1976 to October 1978. The project's major operational objective was to obtain data on the present forest cover of the three participating countries and on the quantitative and qualitative changes of the forest cover which had occurred in some representative critical areas. In the virtual absence of multi-date Landsat cover assessment of change at the country level was not carried out.